911 location technology 'useless'

The technology designed to meet tough US rules on location accuracy for 911 mobile calls has been labeled a complete waste of time by a leading figure in the field.

E-OTD (enhanced observed time difference) is the technology used by AirFlash and Cambridge Positioning Systems (CPS) to identify to the nearest 50 metres the position from which 911 mobile calls are made.

But David Pearce, director of corporate development at SignalSoft, said today's phones are not capable of running E-OTD and operators would incur huge costs to facilitate it.

Pearce commented: "Mobile phones today do not have E-OTD capability built into them. Phones must have specific E-OTD software added inside and a network of reference beacons would have to be rolled out to interact with the software inside the phones."

He added: "If you've got 20 million customers with handsets that don't have E-OTD capability, what are you going to do, give them all new phones? Customers aren't going to pay for that, investors are," he said.

"Their (AirFlash and CPS) point in doing this is just to support investor interest in what they do."

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate E911 states operator technology must give location accuracy of between 100 metres and 50 metres 67 per cent of the time.

Original FCC deadlines have been moved forward since the mandate's initiation in 1999, as four competing technologies vie for supremacy: E-OTD, GPS (global positioning system), COO (cell of origin) and TOA (time of arrival).